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Monday evening I was invited, by a very informed and connected friend, to listen to a discussion of the perceptions and thinking of 3 men who were joined By Senator Cannon, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. I will do my best to summarize what I gleaned.
1) The recent Iranian attack may have had aspects of advance warnings but the panel firmly believe it was Iran's intentional goal of destroying a key IAF air base and to kill many Israeli civilians.
2) They also agreed it was a sea change event and that there could also be, within Iran, a new younger crowd who will be more aggressive.
3) There was general agreement, Israel will/must respond and the nature of the response could be shaved by Biden's desire to avoid an expanded war which will effect targets.
4) The targets could be anything from insignificant pin pricks to bolder ones like destroying Iranian refining capabilities. There was no view Israel is ready to move against Iran's nuclear facilities.
The issue, with respect to Iran's refining facilities. means a rise in energy prices which becomes anathema for Biden due to the election, and positive for Russia but a negative for China.
5) The discussion included Hezbollah and there is a feeling Iran envisions this surrogate is somewhat on a leash because they are viewed as playing a key deterrent role when and If Israel goes after Iran's nuclear facilities.
6) Sen. Cannon would/could not go into detail regarding what we know or don't know as to what progress Iran has made in actually developing a nuclear weapon but all agreed America and our Western Partners must come up with a revised approach as to how they collectively rethink/probe Iran's intentions.
7) 3 on the panel were conservatives and one leaned more politically to the left so there was no commentary regarding the election or speculation of any sea change should Trump win versus Biden's current approach. However, even the liberal participant agreed our thinking about Iran, after tolerating their terrorist activities for over the past 45 years, had to be revised.
8) They discussed the ramifications of how Israel's Muslim and Arab neighbors would react if BIBI chose to tip toe. Israel's neighbors felt comforted by the coordinated attack and even the Saudi were involved and we know Jordan was. Obviously, their fear of Iran's growing strength is the glue that unites them enough to even tolerate a heftier attack by Israel.
9) The discussion turned to Rafah and what to do about protecting the Gaza Palestinians. The decision was clear cut, in that my friend, said we give Egypt billions every year and they must allow Israel to relocate Gaza Palestinians near Egypt and those who chose not to move would be responsible for their own security and decision.
10) there was some discussion about a significant Chinese military shake up where apparently nuclear weapons had been filled with water rather than fuel, some of the launch silos were empty.
11) There was general agreement America was in dire need of more ships, military equipment and probably troops even expanded personnel in virtually all branches.
12) The discussion turned to funding and it was the opinion three separate bills would be passed by The House and probably would get through the Senate, The distinguishing difference was the one for Ukraine would be a loan, only go for military needs not social ones.
I am sure I missed some points but I believe I covered the main ones.
What fascinated me were two items.
a) The Iranian attack was viewed as more purposeful than random.
b) Perhaps Iran would become more aggressive because youth might be in ascendance and become the driving force.
The discussion lasted for a solid hour, there were no questions.
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Obama’s war
Weakness and perfidy have set us on the course to regional conflict. There seems to be a contest between Obama and Biden over who can win more approval from the mullahs. Opinion.
By Alan Newman
Alan Newman is the author of the novel Good Heart and a pro-Israel advocate who holds leadership positions at AIPAC, StandWithUs and other organizations.
(JNS) Before Iran launched its massive missile and drone attack on Israel, U.S. President Joe Biden warned Iran with his familiar one-word declaration: “Don’t!” Iran didn’t take the admonition seriously. This unprecedented aggression is rooted in the failed policies of former President Barack Obama and Biden himself.
It is conventional wisdom that weakness invites aggression.
Unfortunately, before Biden’s welcome participation in defending Israel against Iran’s onslaught, he badly undermined Israel. Biden criticized Israel’s conduct in the war with Hamas, slammed her democratically elected leadership and threatened to place conditions on the delivery of military supplies.
Biden’s decision to abstain on a biased ceasefire resolution vote at the U.N. and the attacks on the Netanyahu government by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer revealed the anti-Israel sentiments within Biden’s own party.
These actions mirrored Obama’s vendetta against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his lame-duck abstention on the defamatory U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334.
-The Obama administration ignored its own red lines in Syria, and the Biden administration disastrously withdrew from Afghanistan. Both embarrassing failures fed the narrative that America is a paper tiger and not to be feared.
-Obama rewarded Iran with a $150 billion payout as part of the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal surrender while Biden paid $10 billion for a few hostages and reduced sanctions on Iranian oil exports.
There seems to be a contest between Obama and Biden over who can win more approval from the mullahs.
Moreover, both presidents hollowed out America’s strength by opening our borders to more than 10 million illegal aliens. This encourages our enemies to wonder why we don’t even protect ourselves, let alone our allies.
Israel bleeds on the battlefield while American friendship remains inconsistent, even though it is clear that Hamas is evil. Indeed, Hamas documented its own evil via GoPro-recorded savagery. UNRWA has been outed as a corrupt collaborator with Hamas. We now know that billions of dollars in aid were stolen to build Gaza’s terror infrastructure.
The demonstrations here in America by anti-Israel mobs signal to Iran that it should proceed with its campaign to destroy Israel. This is proof positive that the investment made in our universities by the Arab world has paid huge dividends. Their clever use of woke progressive dogma proves that if you say something often enough and loud enough, people eventually believe it is true.
History shows that a superpower’s ability to project power is as important as its armaments and troops in uniform. When enemies believe that you will not defend your allies, they conclude that tough talk is nothing but hot air.
It may be that Obama and Biden have set us on a disastrous course towards regional war.
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Iran’s Ominous Attack on Israel
U.S. deterrence fails again, as Tehran shows it is willing to take more escalatory risks while Biden tries to restrain Israel.
By The Editorial Board
Iran’s drone and missile assault on Israel Saturday night into Sunday is an open act of aggression, but it isn’t the start of this conflict. It’s an escalation of the war Iran has been waging against Israel for months through its Middle East proxies. The difference now is that Iran’s imperialistic face is in the open rather than in the shadows, and that should change calculations in Washington in particular.
Will Israel Strike Back at Iran Despite Joe Biden's Opposition?
Supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have been the puppet masters of Middle East mayhem, the better to avoid direct culpability. Israel’s strike on April 1 against IRGC generals in Syria, in response to Iran’s proxy attacks against Israel, was apparently more than the mullahs could tolerate. The weekend attack is truth in advertising at last, and it is an ominous sign that Iran is willing to take new escalatory risks.
It should also be clarifying to Western leaders about Iran’s malevolent intentions. Thousands of American citizens live in Israel and could have been casualties. Iran’s bombardment wasn’t discriminate or limited to military targets, unlike Israel’s precision strike that killed the IRGC generals.
The fact that most of the drones and missiles were intercepted is a relief, but it isn’t reassuring against future swarm attacks. Israeli air defenses were a spectacular success, aided by assets from the U.S., U.K., Jordan, and perhaps others. But what happens if the next attack comes all at once from Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria as well as Iran?
This is another case of failed U.S. deterrence. President Biden had warned Iran not to attack after U.S. intelligence detected signs of preparation in Tehran. “Don’t,” Mr. Biden said. But like Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, Iran went ahead anyway, no doubt confident that Mr. Biden wouldn’t respond militarily. And sure enough, the word Sunday is that his main message in a call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Saturday was not to strike back.
White House theories of escalation management don’t work against a regime that thinks a U.S. President fears escalation more than Iran does. U.S. restraint since the Oct. 7 massacre has encouraged Tehran to see how much more it can get away with.
The attack on Israel also underscores the failure of Mr. Biden’s Iran policy. He tried to mollify the mullahs by easing sanctions, freeing tens of billions in frozen funds, and trying to renegotiate the 2015 nuclear deal. Iran spied weakness and has mobilized its proxy forces against Israel, U.S. troops in Syria and Iraq, and commercial ships in the Red Sea. The U.S. has responded with pinprick bombing raids, and now Iran is escalating again.
Imagine how Iran would behave if it acquires nuclear weapons. At a minimum a nuclear-armed Tehran would be less restrained in its proxy wars and terrorism. It is also a messianic regime bent on spreading Shiite revolution. Such a regime might be all too willing to risk Armageddon to destroy the Jewish state.
“Take the win,” Mr. Biden reportedly told Mr. Netanyahu. But is it a win if Iran can directly attack Israel without consequences? Israel shouldn’t have to wait in a defensive crouch until Iran decides to attack again. Israel is justified in attacking Iran’s assets, including military targets in Iran.
Israel is no doubt considering whether to destroy as much of Iran’s nuclear capability as possible and delay a nuclear breakout. But the risks for Israel are considerable without U.S. support, especially without bunker-buster bombs to hit underground sites where enriched uranium is stored. This means Iran again controls when and how to escalate.
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The attack should at least cause Mr. Biden and his fellow Democrats to end their cold war with Israel over Gaza and recognize that this is really a war against Iran. The vocal Democratic threats against Israel likely gave Iran more confidence it could strike without consequences. Appeasing the left by threatening to cut off arms to Israel is a betrayal and will invite more Iranian escalation.
This is an opportunity for Donald Trump too. His response on Saturday night was to say our country is weak and this wouldn’t have happened if he were President. But it did happen, and Mr. Trump would inherit the mess if he wins in November. He should drop his own ambivalence toward Israel and declare his undivided support.
Leaders in both parties should also start telling the truth to Americans about the new world of global threats. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are all on the march and working together. That won’t magically change if Mr. Trump wins. The U.S. needs an urgent program of rearmament to restore deterrence. Saturday’s attack won’t be the last against our allies or the U.S. homeland.
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Israel’s War Leaders Don’t Trust One Another
Long-simmering grudges and arguments over tactics have soured relations between Prime Minister Netanyahu, the defense minister and a former military chief
By Rory Jones and Carrie Keller-Lynn
TEL AVIV—Six months into the conflict against Hamas, the Israeli public is deeply divided about how to win the war in the Gaza Strip. So, too, are the three top officials in the war cabinet meant to foster unity in that effort.
Long-simmering grudges and arguments over how best to fight Hamas have soured relations between Israel’s wartime decision makers—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the former head of the Israeli military, Benny Gantz. The three men are at odds over the biggest decisions they need to make: how to launch a decisive military push, free Israel’s hostages and govern the postwar strip.
Now, they also must make one of the biggest decisions the country has ever faced: how to respond to Iran’s first-ever direct attack on Israeli territory. Their power struggle could affect whether the Gaza conflict spirals into a bigger regional fight with Iran that transforms the Middle East’s geopolitical order and shapes Israel’s relations with the U.S. for decades.
“The lack of trust between these three people is so clear and so significant,” said Giora Eiland, a former Israeli general and national security adviser.
Netanyahu, the nation’s longest-serving premier, increasingly is trying to direct the Gaza war by himself, while Gallant and Gantz are widely seen to be trying to cut out Netanyahu from decisions.
Gantz, the general who led Israel’s last major war against Hamas a decade ago, has previously expressed a desire to oust Netanyahu as prime minister. He called earlier this month for early elections in September after tens of thousands of people demonstrated against the prime minister’s handling of the war—a sign that Gantz’s base has grown frustrated with his role in a Netanyahu-led government.
The three war cabinet members have met daily since Saturday’s attack by Iran, vowing a response but leaving vague the timing, scale and location. They face a challenge in designing a response that balances their goals of deterring Iran, avoiding a regional war and not alienating the U.S. and Arab states involved in repelling Iran’s strike. President Biden has urged the Israelis to use caution in any response and has ruled out American involvement in an Israeli strike on Iranian soil.
“The risk of miscalculation is quite high,” said Raz Zimmt, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies. “We are at the beginning of a very dangerous stage in the Iranian-Israeli conflict.”
Gallant is considered the most hawkish of the three. At the start of the war, he advocated a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah, but he also is eager to align with the U.S.
Netanyahu has been keeping Gallant and Gantz in the dark about key decisions, according to current and former Israeli officials. In an effort to gain control over food and supplies going into Gaza, he has considered appointing an official on humanitarian aid who will report directly to his office and bypass the defense minister, said Israeli officials familiar with the matter.
“It’s very hard for the prime minister to make the army do what he wants if the minister of defense is not aligned with him,” said Amir Avivi, founder of the Israel Defense and Security Forum think tank. “This lack of alignment is making things for Netanyahu very, very hard.”
The three men have been rivals for years. Gantz has run against Netanyahu in five elections that political analysts have described as some of the country’s nastiest ever. Last year, Netanyahu tried to fire Gallant, who has told people close to him that the prime minister’s previous Gaza policies have been a failure.
As for relations between Gantz and Gallant, they barely spoke to one another for more than a decade before joining the war cabinet together
Polls show that Gantz is Israel’s most popular leader. People close to him have been trying to persuade members of Netanyahu’s coalition and his own party to leave the government and force the prime minister from power, according to people familiar with the matter. That would leave Gantz as the most likely politician to replace Netanyahu.
Gantz has tried and failed several times to oust Netanyahu, a savvy political operator known inside Israel as “the magician” for his ability to escape political trouble. Now Netanyahu is politically weakened by the war, setting up a test of whether Gantz, and potentially even Gallant, can finally end his decade and a half of political dominance.
With cease-fire talks in Cairo earlier this month, Netanyahu also is under pressure from the far-right flank of his coalition, parts of which recently threatened to tear the government apart if an agreement is reached to end the war without taking out Hamas’s military. That right flank also is pressing for a dramatic response to Iran.
Israel’s handling of the war has come under greater scrutiny after Netanyahu acknowledged the military hit an aid convoy, killing seven humanitarian workers and drawing wide international condemnation.
On April 8, Netanyahu said he has set a date to push into the Gazan city of Rafah, the last Hamas stronghold where more than a million Palestinians are sheltering. He has faced opposition, though, from Gallant, who wants to figure out how to manage American expectations before proceeding, said people familiar with the disagreements.
The U.S. has warned Israel against mounting a Rafah operation, and Gallant is concerned about damaging Israel’s relationship with Washington and losing American financial and military support, these people said. President Biden told Netanyahu on an April 4 call that future U.S. support would be conditioned on Israel’s treatment of Gaza’s civilians.
All three men have different ideas about postwar Gaza. The prime minister has said the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority in its current form should play no role, and is focused on the Israeli army working with local leaders. Palestinians say Netanyahu’s plan amounts to occupation, something he says he opposes
The defense minister sees Palestinians connected to the Palestinian Authority’s leadership in the West Bank as the best option. He has told people in meetings that he would rather have chaos in Gaza than Israeli soldiers governing the enclave, said people close to Gallant.
Last month, Netanyahu canceled a trip to Washington by his top aides to protest a U.S. decision not to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an unconditional cease-fire. Gallant still went ahead anyway with a visit that wasn’t coordinated with the prime minister.
Gantz also flew to Washington last month over the prime minister’s objections. The Biden administration openly received Gantz while signaling frustration with Netanyahu.
The three men also don’t agree about how to free the hostages held by Hamas. Gantz has called publicly for a deal to secure their release, saying their lives are at risk. Netanyahu and Gallant have emphasized that only military pressure along with negotiations will lead to their release.
But Netanyahu controls Israel’s hostage negotiation team, led by Israel’s spy chief. While the prime minister has publicly talked of a deal, he has at times taken a hard line on the terms. Netanyahu has said critics who say he is blocking a deal are mistaken, and people close to him say his is being a tough negotiator.
U.S. efforts to broker a temporary truce were complicated last week by Israeli strikes that killed three sons of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh.
Personal tension between Israel’s leadership goes back more than a decade. In 2010, Netanyahu’s government nominated Gallant, a 30-year veteran of the armed forces, to become leader of the military. After the nomination was announced, documents became public that alleged Gallant had orchestrated a smear campaign against other contenders for the job, including Gantz, according to a regulator’s later report on the matter.
Gallant denied involvement, and police accused an ally of the military chief at the time of faking the document. Nevertheless, the scandal helped derail the nomination and end Gallant’s military career.
Gantz got the job instead, becoming chief of the military between 2011 and 2015, a period during which he led two major operations against Hamas. He later used that credential to launch a political career, creating a new party that beginning in 2019 turned him into Netanyahu’s chief political rival.
Gantz is Natanyahu’s chief political rival. An election billboard in 2021 for Gantz’s Blue and White party reads: ‘It’s Benny in the Knesset or
Three elections in a one-year span produced no clear win for either Gantz or Netanyahu.
In 2020, the two agreed to join a coalition and to alternate the premiership to end a destabilizing political period. The experiment dissolved in acrimony within a year.
Gantz accused Netanyahu of blocking him from the prime minister’s seat. Netanyahu said he couldn’t run a government working with Gantz. Gantz won far fewer seats in 2021 elections, reflecting voter anger with him for serving with Netanyahu.
“Gantz walked out of there with not one but multiple knives in his back,” said Reuven Hazan, a political scientist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
After a detour into the oil-and-gas industry following his military career, Gallant decided in 2014 to get into politics. Israel’s conflict that year with Hamas, overseen by Netanyahu and Gantz, then the military’s chief, had frustrated Gallant. He felt their limited war aims of destroying Hamas’s tunnel network but not routing the group altogether were shortsighted, people who know Gallant said.
After a few years in a smaller political party, Gallant joined Netanyahu’s Likud. Netanyahu named him defense minister in 2022, finally giving Gallant top command over Israel’s forces.
“He felt he had been screwed,” said Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington under Netanyahu, referring to Gallant’s failed 2010 nomination. “This was justice.”
In 2023, Netanyahu’s new government tried to enact large-scale changes to Israel’s judicial system, sparking months of protests, often led by military reservists. Believing there was a crisis brewing in the army that endangered national security, Gallant publicly urged Netanyahu to hold off.
Netanyahu fired him, setting off strikes and civil unrest, before backing down and suspending the legislation. Two weeks later, Gallant was reinstated.
The Oct. 7 attacks brought the three men together in the war cabinet. Gantz and Gallant set aside their differences to try to work professionally. During news conferences, they would hug and shake hands, and they appeared together in a tour in northern Gaza.
But tensions heightened between the two men and Netanyahu. The prime minister, facing public criticism for Oct. 7, blamed the security failures on Israel’s defense and intelligence services. After Gantz criticized him, he apologized.
Netanyahu, under pressure from the White House, overruled Gallant on a pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Days later, the prime minister met with the former army chief whom Gallant partly blamed for derailing his 2010 nomination to run the military. The former chief is one of the few people in Israel that Gallant refuses to shake hands with, and the defense minister viewed the meeting as an attempt by Netanyahu to undermine him, according to a person close to Gallant. Netanyahu’s office described it as a routine meeting to strategize on the war.
Gallant and Netanyahu began organizing separate news conferences, sometimes just minutes apart.
Asked about one decision to make separate media statements, Netanyahu said he had suggested they meet the press together, but Gallant, he said, “decided what he decided.”
Cracks emerged in the war cabinet after an initial Israeli blitzkrieg against Hamas forces in Gaza slowed, and the humanitarian cost of the war grew.
Netanyahu fell out publicly with Biden, but Gallant talked regularly to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Gallant’s team joked that the defense minister, who was spending nights at military headquarters, couldn’t fall asleep without a bedtime story from Austin.
In January, Gadi Eisenkot, a nonvoting member of the war cabinet who is a political ally of Gantz, publicly criticized Netanyahu’s approach to the war, suggesting that the prime minister’s talk of absolute victory was unrealistic. He called for elections to restore public trust in the government.
Soon after, Netanyahu said Israel would achieve “total victory” over Hamas. That goal has proved elusive.
Israel says it has destroyed most of Hamas’s military, killing thousands of its fighters, including senior operatives. To cripple Hamas’s military capability, the Israeli military says it still needs to attack what it says are four Hamas battalions in Rafah. Israel also hasn’t yet found and killed Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, who Israel says orchestrated the Oct. 7 attacks that sparked the war and killed 1,200 people.
More than 33,000 Palestinians have died in the Gaza war, according to Gaza health authorities, whose numbers don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. That humanitarian cost has brought intense international pressure on Israel to agree to a deal to exchange hostages for a cease-fire.
This month, Israel’s mass antigovernment protest movement flared anew.
Even if Gantz chose to leave the government, at least five members of Netanyahu’s Likud party, or one of his coalition partners, would have to pull out, too, to collapse the prime minister’s 64-seat majority in the 120-seat parliament.
That leaves Netanyahu with room to maneuver.
“The most important thing for Netanyahu is his political survival,” said Ofer Shelah, a former lawmaker and military analyst with the Institute for National Security Studies. “The longer the current situation remains, the better his chances of remaining prime minister are.”
Anat Peled and Dov Lieber contributed to this article.
Write to Rory Jones at Rory.Jones@wsj.com
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Launched from Iran, Made in America
Biden’s complicity in the attack on Iran from beginning to end.
by Daniel Greenfield
On Saturday night, Iran launched its attack, codenamed “Ya Rasool Allah” or “Messenger of Allah”, on the Jewish State, after Israel had taken out the Iranian mastermind of Oct 7.
The attack began with waves of drones to swamp Israel’s air defenses, followed by cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. While the British and the French took out some drones, U.S. forces accounted for about half the total of drones and some of the ballistic missiles, leaving the rest for the Israelis to deal with. By the time it was over, 99% of the attack had been intercepted.
The only serious injury in the “Messenger of Allah” bombardment was to a 7-year-old Muslim Bedouin girl.
But why was Iran able to launch so many missiles at all, how did everyone know when the attack would happen, and why is Biden warning Israel not to respond to the Iranian attack?
Last month, the Biden administration provided a $10 billion sanctions waiver for Iran. The administration warned Iran that it would impose sanctions on its missile program if it sent them to Russia. There was no mention of the real focus of those sanctions which was concern that Iran would provide those weapons to proxy terror groups like Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite militias and the Houthis, now using those weapons to attack civilian container ships and US Navy vessels.
Iran should never have had that weapons technology in the first place. In 2006, the Bush administration had convinced the UN Security Council to sanction Iran’s missile program “to prevent the supply, sale or transfer …of all items, materials, equipment, goods and technology which could contribute to Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.”
Part of Obama’s Iran Deal allowed those sanctions to expire on October 18, 2023. Two weeks after the Oct 7 attacks on Israel which killed over 1,000 people, the Biden administration let the UN sanctions lapse, making it easier for Iran to buy, export and boost its development of weapons technology. The administration tried to substitute a limited sanctions program of its own for the original sanctions while continuing to allow Iran to access billions in sanctions relief.
Where the Trump administration had snapped back sanctions for Iran’s violations, Biden lifted them a month after taking office. Sen. Ted Cruz has estimated that the Biden administration allowed around $100 billion to flow to Iran since 2021. That $10 billion was just the latest of it.
Despite the open violations of the Iran Deal, Biden allowed Iran to benefit from an agreement it was actively violating every single day even as it was attacking American soldiers and Israel.
When Biden allowed Iran that latest $10 billion in sanctions relief, not only were US Navy personnel actively in combat with Iran’s Houthi terrorists, but two Navy SEALS had died in an operation to intercept Iranian weapons being smuggled from Somalia to the Houthis in Yemen. In Jordan, an attack by Iran’s Shiite militias operating out of Iraq had killed three American servicemembers. While Biden appeared willing to let Iran get away with it, Israel was not.
As General Mohammad Zahedi and other figures from Iran’s IRGC international terror network were meeting in a building near Iran’s terror facility in Damascus, they were taken out. After his death, Iranian sources named Zahedi as the mastermind of the Oct 7 attacks.
What followed were a series of back-channel communications between the Biden administration and Iran through various third parties. The goal of these negotiations was to persuade Iran not to “escalate” the conflict by limiting its attack to what a Reuters report described as “within certain limits.” The timing of the attack was so widely known that media reports correctly repeated warnings that Iran would strike within 36 hours. Hours before the attack began, not only Iran’s allies, but also other countries in the region, were already prepared for it to begin.
Instead of making clear to Iran that an attack was unacceptable, the Biden administration was pre-arranging the terms of the attack on one of its allies while warning it not to respond.
When Iran launched the attack, it had been coordinated with Biden officials. Had it really wanted to launch a damaging assault, it would have changed the timing of the attack. Instead it not only launched the attack on time, but it did so while communicating with D.C. through backchannels before and after the attack. A Biden administration official stated that there were “direct communications through the Swiss channel” including to tell the Biden administration when the attack was winding down.
That is not how attacks normally work, but this was not a normal attack, nor is it the actual one.
Iran launched the attack to demonstrate its capabilities. For the first time it showed that it could coordinate missile and drone launches from all of its clients across the region. The launches took place not only from Iran, but from the Houthis in Yemen, Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The attacks allowed Iran to test a coordinated assault across four countries, to test how Israeli and American air defenses would respond to being swarmed, and to score a propaganda victory with images of its drones over Jerusalem and that part of the Temple Mount where Muslim invaders had built their Al Aqsa mosque. What it was not meant to do was be devastating.
Iran would have rejoiced if it had hammered Israeli air bases and cities, but barring critical errors by Israel and America, it wasn’t expecting more than an expensive light show and a little rubble.
Compare the Iranian attack on Israel with the finely coordinated attack on Tower 22, the U.S. base on the Jordanian-Iranian border, where the Iraqi Shiite terror proxies had perfectly timed the attack to coincide with a moment of confusion caused by the return of a U.S. drone, or the Oct 7 attack which set out to analyze and dismantle Israel’s border defense network, timing drone attacks to disable automated defenses, with this straightforward telegraphed attack.
If Iran remains true to form, the actual attack will come from its proxies, will exploit vulnerabilities in Israeli defenses and will allow the regime to maintain plausible deniability as it did on Oct 7.
What happened on Saturday night was not the actual attack, but a feint with the added purpose of convincing the Biden administration that its diplomatic approach can work. Beginning with the Iran Deal, the Islamic terror state has played a complicated game, welcoming diplomacy and then abruptly rejecting it, holding out hope and then taking it away, but only doing it long enough to keep up the chase. This time around, Tehran convinced Biden that its Islamic leadership, despite their cries of, “Death to America” are rational actors who want to manage the conflict.
In the two years before Oct 7, Hamas convinced the Biden administration and the Israelis that it could be dealt with before launching a devastating assault, so too Iran, like other Islamic terrorist entities, specializes in luring America into a state of complacency before an attack.
And so the Biden administration is warning Israel not to respond. After all these years it believes that Iran can be dealt with and that it successfully negotiated an end to the crisis. It allowed Iran to launch its attack on Israel, helped intercept it and foolishly believes that Tehran is now satisfied because all its leaders ever wanted, like Biden, was a show, not the real thing.
Biden thinks that when Iran’s elites chant, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”, it’s as empty a slogan as all of his campaign promises. But, unlike Biden, Iran’s leaders keep their promises. The slogans are serious. They intend to destroy America and they intend to destroy Israel.
American soldiers continue dying at the hands of Iran and its terror proxies while D.C. diplomats conduct empty negotiations and Iran’s agents penetrate their way into our government.
After September 11, Biden suggested, “this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran.” Since then billions of dollars have made their way to Iran. The Islamic terror state has killed and kidnapped Americans, it is encircling America’s allies in the region, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, and still the ‘no strings’ checks keep coming from D.C..
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism
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Coming clean:+++
Former FBI Acting Director Admits ‘Many Mistakes’ in Trump Campaign Surveillance
Andrew McCabe made the remarks this week in a CNN interview.
Former FBI Acting Director Admits ‘Many Mistakes’ in Trump Campaign Surveillance
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe waits for the beginning of a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee with the other heads of the U.S. intelligence agencies in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill May 11, 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Jack Phillips
By Jack Phillips
4/12/2024
Updated:
4/12/2024
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A former top FBI official who was involved in the surveillance of former President Donald Trump’s campaign admitted that there were “mistakes” that were made in the warrant that was used to target his former aide.
During a segment on CNN, former FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe was asked about a recent Truth Social post made by the former president in which he called on House Republicans to reject a measure to “kill FISA” because it was used illegally to spy on his campaign in 2016, referring to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant that was issued to surveil former Trump aide Carter Page over alleged ties to the Russian government.
Mr. McCabe was involved in opening the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane probe into President Trump’s 2016 campaign and has publicly defended the bureau’s process, signing off on the Page warrant.
“He may be referring to the FISA that was obtained surveil Carter Page. We now know there were many mistakes in that FISA. Those are all regrettable,” Mr. McCabe said during the CNN program.
However, the former FBI official asserted that President Trump is “totally wrong” in calling for House Republicans to block reauthorization of the FISA provision in a bill that is being considered in Congress this week.
“It’s not surprising that Donald Trump is against surveillance capacity and authority for the FBI, because he is someone who’s been investigated by the FBI,” Mr. McCabe said. “But nevertheless, he is absolutely wrong on this count.”
Even though “mistakes” were made in the Page FISA warrant, Mr. McCabe added that Republicans are considering a “totally different thing,” saying the warrant wasn’t involved in FISA’s Section 702, which is being considered in the House.
In 2018, President Trump signed a renewal of the act’s Section 702 in 2018, writing on Twitter at the time that it was “not the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election.”
On Friday, the House voted to reauthorize the FISA Section 702 program, which was slated to expire next week. It will now be considered by the Senate.
Section 702 allows federal government agencies to collect electronic communications of non-American citizens outside the United States without the use of a warrant. The measure has been criticized by civil liberties groups for allegedly allowing the U.S. government to collect data on Americans who have contact with individuals who aren’t American citizens living outside the country and who are being surveilled.
A previous version of the bill with a five-year term foundered in the House on Wednesday after Democratic and Republican critics said it gave the government too much power to spy on American citizens.
FBI Director Christopher Wray this week pressed lawmakers to renew Section 702, calling it an indispensable tool against U.S. adversaries. “It’s critical in securing our nation, and we are in crunch time,” Mr. Wray told lawmakers.
Mr. McCabe was fired in 2019 by the bureau after an internal Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation found he made “an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor—including under oath—on multiple occasions.” Before, he was named head of the FBI for a brief period after then-FBI Director James Comey was fired.
During a Congressional hearing in 2020, he was asked by lawmakers about signing off on the warrant to surveil Mr. Page. “If you knew then what you know now would you have signed the warrant application in June of 2017 against Carter Page?” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked him at the time. “No, sir,” responded the former FBI official.
“Who is responsible for ruining Mr. Carter Page’s life?” the senator asked, noting that the warrant was “completely devoid of the truth.” Mr. McCabe responded: “I think that we are all responsible for the work that went into that FISA.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
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Biden knows how to embolden terrorists. He has perfected the art through insane weakness.
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When Biden Says ‘Don’t,’ America’s Adversaries Do
The Taliban, Vladimir Putin and now Iran have demonstrated the failure of American deterrence.
By Gerard Baker
The word had scarcely left the president’s lips when the military planners in Tehran began sending their missiles and drones flying toward Israel on Saturday night in an extensive but mercifully futile attack on the Jewish state.
No one could have been surprised that the Islamic Republic chose to ignore the warning from Joe Biden. In the three years of his presidency, his “Don’t” has come to be less a minatory instruction to adversaries and more a reliable starting signal to do whatever it is the president wants them not to.
The Taliban ignored his warnings and confident predictions of their failure and launched their final push into Kabul in 2021, while U.S. forces were still in Afghanistan. Six months later Vladimir Putin dismissed Mr. Biden’s injunction not to invade Ukraine and marched right in. Now Iran has felt emboldened to attack our closest Middle Eastern ally with what—if the president gets his way—will be impunity.
In diplomacy as in childrearing or teaching, to be effective, “Don’t” requires the expectation on the part of those being admonished that something bad will happen if they ignore the warning. That is the essence of deterrence, which had kept the U.S. and our allies largely safe for three quarters of a century. There have been wars, of course, bloody and debilitating wars that claimed American and allied lives. But most of the time our enemies had good reason to believe that defying America involved a substantial risk—an existential risk in some cases.
Under this president so many lines have been crossed that the world is running out of red paint. His failure to deter can be measured in the terrifying number of historic geopolitical firsts recorded in the past three years: the first major ground war in Europe in nearly 80 years, the deadliest attack on Israel in its 75-year history, the first time in its 45-year history that Iran’s revolutionary regime has directly attacked the Jewish state.
Deterrence, or the lack of it, works on a kind of sliding scale. With each new unpunished breach of our empty verbal warnings, the expectation that the U.S. might actually inflict real harm on the enemy diminishes.
There’s a familiar pattern to the Biden administration’s rapid slippage from verbal deterrence to practical acquiescence. Its officials start out saying—and even doing—all the right things, but evidently lack the staying power to make the warnings stick.
In Ukraine, even as he supplied Kyiv with vital support to repel the Russian invasion, Mr. Biden repeatedly shied away from measures that might facilitate a Ukrainian victory. (Now, of course, it is mainly Republicans who seem to want to deprive Ukraine even of the chance of defending itself.) When Hamas slaughtered Israelis last Oct. 7, again the administration’s initial response was right. But as the diplomatic and political going got heavy, the backsliding accelerated.
Now, with this first ever direct Iranian assault on Israel, Mr. Biden is again undermining our deterrent capability by seemingly trying to ensure Tehran’s action goes unpunished.
“Don’t”—only this time the president is apparently telling our ally not to respond.
Israel must make its own judgment about what response is needed. The spectacle of an American president demanding restraint can’t help but undermine Israel’s long-term security and again weaken U.S. deterrence.
Iran’s missiles have so far failed to kill a single Israeli, although a 7-year-old Arab girl is “fighting for her life,” according to former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. The minimal damage is a tribute to the Jewish state’s resourcefulness, the defensive systems we and others have supplied, and the welcome solidarity of allies including the U.S., the U.K., France and several Arab nations.
But it doesn’t exonerate Iran. Tehran may view the latest phase of its existential struggle with Israel as “concluded,” as it said over the weekend, but it was a massive and wholly disproportionate escalation. Israel carried out a targeted attack on senior Iranian military figures who were—one may reliably assume—plotting the next stage of their plan to eliminate Israel. Iran fired hundreds of missiles indiscriminately across the Jewish state.
As already noted, Democrats aren’t alone in behaving in ways that cede vital ground to our enemies. In the case of the Republican Party and Donald Trump, it may not be a lack of will that is undermining our deterrent capacity so much as an active and bewildering reluctance even to try deterring at least one of our principal adversaries. The party’s softness on Russia is a curious strategic misjudgment that will haunt us.
For now we have a president who seems preternaturally indisposed to taking the kind of tough stance deterrence demands as our greatest strategic challenge lies immediately in front of us. As China’s leaders watch display after display of American diffidence, they must be viewing the next four years as an unmissable opportunity.
If we continue to defer to rather than deter our adversaries, Beijing will surely respond like Iran, Russia and terrorists worldwide when this president says “Don’t.”
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The anti-Semitic, anti-Israel rioting encouraged, largely financed by Soros and tolerated by Biden, has finally morphed into hatred of America.
I never doubted it would spread and I warned it would reach all decent patriotic Americans eventually. Hatred has a way of bubbling over and spilling outside the cauldron and so it has.
Far as I am concerned, if participates are American citizens, who hate America, I would incarcerate them for their disloyalty if that can be done constitutionally on some legal basis. The liberals did so with those they deemed guilty in the attack on Congress in 1/6 after refusing to send the national guard as requested by Trump Why? Because Nancy Pelosi knew she could hang an albatross around Trump's neck. As president, he had every legal right to question the electoralvote tally.
If they rioters are illegals I would deport them immediately back to where they came and drop the with or without parachutes.
Soros knows if he can crack the rules and enforcement of law and order he can destroy America, which is his goal. Biden is his dupe and we are experiencing the effect of allowing illegals, who hate this country, impact our nation.
I believe, unless "deplorables and like minded citizens" defeat Biden at the polls, we are doomed as a republic because too much toothpaste is out of the tube.
Once disorder is allowed to rule, as it is currently happening with the illegal trials of Trump by Soros financed attorneys, our constitution is seriously being tested and we could easily lose our republic.
Perhaps Biden believes he can regain the presidency by getting back radical Islamist support and votes. I submit he will lose far more independent voters even though they are ambivalent about Trump because their love of America is great and their fear of what Biden has allowed has reached intolerable levels.
Time will tell if the election is basically honest.
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The Pro-Hamas Crowds will Soon Have a Rendezvous with Reality The accounting they’re about to face.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Posted By Ruth King
For over six months, the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests have accelerated, and now are predictably incendiary and violent.
Recently, they have jumped the shark with unapologetic chants of “Death to America”. Or so a cheering crowd in Michigan chanted in homage to the late king of all Western-hostage-takers, the murderous Ayatollah Khomeini. And the huckster speaker revved them up by quoting Malcolm X that America is “one of the rottenest countries that has ever existed on this Earth.” (Does such a condemnation of fellow Americans presage mass reverse migration of unhappy Middle Easterners back to the West Bank, Gaza, and Iran?)
The more these demonstrators shut down major bridges at commute hour, defaced iconic government monuments and cemeteries, disrupted Easter and Christmas services (try that with mosques at Ramadan), broke into the Capitol and congressional chambers (no January 6-like penalties to come?), and hunted down Jewish students, the bolder they became.
Apparently, the demonstrators were convinced they were either exempt under the woke aegis, or too precious in Joe Biden’s Michigan electoral calculus, or too useful to campuses as rich full-tuition-paying foreign students on gold-plated student visas.
But everything and everyone have limits. They have now crossed them, and are about to face an accounting, and for a variety of reasons.
1) News is leaking out that Hamas may have for some time been bluffing about a ceasefire for hostages. Given Hamas has suddenly announced that they cannot meet the conditions of the proposed ceasefire, since not all the forty women and sick and elderly men taken hostage are still alive.
If true, then their months of bartering and “negotiating” were a likely sham, and their earlier claims that three hostages were collateral damage of Israeli strikes become more dubious.
Why would they kill their escape route?
To hide their torturing and raping of the kidnapped? In furor at their own-self-inflicted dilemmas? Sick hatred of Jews?
Who knows? But, if true, this may remind the gullible West that it cannot trust anything the lying Hamas says: that the ultimate fate of the hostages did not depend on the Israeli entrance into Gaza, given that Hamas had either already killed many of the remaining kidnapped, or had planned to do so under any circumstances.
2) For the first time since the ‘60s, universities are facing protests that they genuinely fear. College presidents are starting to realize that if they continue to allow the pro-Hamas violent demonstrators to make a mockery of campus rules and laws, they soon will have no campus at all. And the mob then will determine who can and cannot speak with impunity. Administrators’ tolerance of overt anti-Semitism and violence against Jews is turning American campuses into something like late-1930s German universities.
3) Yet at Vanderbilt and Pomona we for the first time are witnessing a return to administrative sanity, marked by suspensions and exemptions. And the reactions of those held accountable confirm how pathetic these bullies are. They prove eager to resort to violence and crash into lecture halls, only suddenly to become fragile and terrified for their beautiful career plans endangered by a modicum of accountability. Expect more universities to be encouraged by just how well deterrence can work against woke thuggery.
4) Joe Biden’s pandering in Michigan is reaching the point of obscenity and if continued will be counter-productive. For each Muslim-American voter he thinks he can keep by abandoning Israel and protecting the agendas of the October 7 killers and kidnappers, he is going to lose two voters appalled that fellow-Americans in Michigan are now calling for death to America. Biden is so confident of the Jewish-American vote and donor class that he is now siding with those calling for the absolute destruction of the Jewish state and everyone inside. Is he convinced that his Jewish base is permanently in tune with Chuck Schumer—or will it finally have had enough?
5) The old myth that being anti-Israel had nothing to do with being anti-Semitic is now exposed for the lie it mostly always was. The pro-Hamas crowd makes no distinction, and certainly not on campus, where the more educated the protestor, the more likely he is to harass Jews first, and ask questions later if at all about whether his targets support Israel. The new myth that being pro-Gaza has nothing to do with being pro-Hamas is equally exposed as a lie by the chants of “from the River to the Sea” and calls for a return to the pre-1947 borders—in other words, the Hamas charter of destroying Israel.
6) Do these protestors who scream “Genocide Joe” really see an alternative in November? Because the more they show America who they are and what their values and agenda intend, the more they make it clear why we need to reexamine every aspect of immigration, junk DEI and substitute required civic education, and undertake a complete reappraisal of higher education.
The latter would revisit current tax-exempt endowment income, government subsidized student loans, massive unaudited federal grants, the huge number of foreign students, and their exemption from federal oversight.
It is long past time to overhaul the student visa programs, replete with rapid cancellations of visas and deportations for those who come to study but end up breaking our laws.
In sum, the more brazen the pro-Hamas crowd and the more they reveal the cravenness of the Biden administration, the more they may ensure their rendezvous with Donald Trump in 2025.
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Did he bet? Did he win?
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++How Best to Respond to Iran
By Sherwin Pomerantz
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The IDF on Tuesday announced a drill testing the interface between its cyber and technology units and its Northern Command operational units. The announcement of the drill comes as Israel considers potentially imminent attack options against Iran following the Islamic Republic’s attack of around 350 aerial threats on Israel on April 14. Part of Israel’s response could be in the cyber domain, and it is quite possible that an attack by the Jewish state will lead to a further counterstrike by Tehran and its senior proxy, Hezbollah.
As part of the drill, both combat and cyber and technology forces deployed throughout the North, on every separate front, to simulate readiness for an all-out hybrid digital and kinetic war. IDF Division 210 drilled specific scenarios for threats both from Lebanon and Syria, while IDF artillery Brigade 282 also participated in an emergency scenario. The IDF’s special alpine unit for high mountains also participated, including training for urban fighting scenarios.
IDF Chief of Staff. Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi on Monday night spoke at the Nevatim air force base in southern Israel, which Iran targeted and partially hit on Sunday, saying, “We are weighing our steps, and the firing of so many missiles, including cruise missiles, and drones at the State of Israel’s territory, will be responded to.” Halevi added that he was uplifted by the massive defensive support umbrella provided by the US to help shoot down Iran’s swarms of aerial attacks.
In addition, he said that he knew that the pilots at the base were ready for any mission against Iran
Regarding reports that the damage to Nevatim was more extensive than originally admitted by the IDF, the military doubled down on Monday, calling the reports incorrect. The IDF did not give full specifics, The Jerusalem Post could not independently confirm the situation, and the military has sometimes in the past downplayed successes by Israeli adversaries in a somewhat exaggerated fashion, claiming national security concerns.
Hamas has dropped the number of hostages it is willing to release in the first stage of any deal with Israel from 40 to 20, according to Israel’s Channel 12. The terrorist organization is also demanding the release of more hardened terrorists and a higher ratio of jailed Palestinian terrorists released per Israeli hostage freed. Hamas said on Saturday that it reaffirms “our adherence to our demands and the national demands of our people,” with “a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of the occupation army from the entire Gaza Strip, the return of the displaced to their areas and places of residence, intensification of the entry of relief and aid and the start of reconstruction.” While Israel has shown flexibility in the hopes of arriving at a hostage deal, Hamas has impeded an agreement, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on Monday.
Regarding a response to Iran, Jack Detsch, a Pentagon and national security reporter at Foreign Policy magazine, postulates that there are three ways Israel could respond to Iran while minimizing the global fallout and reaction. He begins by taking the position that Israel probably has no choice but to respond, a position echoed by most of our leadership here.
That was the message that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reportedly conveyed to US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, even as top Biden administration officials—including the president himself—urged Israel to be careful with its response. Biden also told Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that the United States would not participate in or support a direct Israeli strike on Iran.
In light of that pressure, Israel has a choice to make. Does it go with a high-risk strike on Iranian soil, perhaps against its nuclear program or another high-value target? Or does it try to lower the risk of regional war with a more tailored approach, such as a cyberattack against Tehran, targeted strikes against Iranian commanders outside of Iran, or an attack on Iran-backed proxy groups in the region? To answer that question, Detsch identifies the following three options as ideal:
Option 1: Attack Iran’s Nuclear Program
Option 2: Target Iranian Commanders, Military, or Sites Inside or Outside Iran
Option 3: Strike Iranian Proxies or Launch a Cyberattack on Iran
Each of these options carries its own potential risks. Nevertheless, none of them fall into the category of attacking Iran itself (except for disabling their nuclear program) or invading the country, which Israel would, of course, be wise to avoid.
Personally, I remain against doing anything now. Iran has embarrassed itself by not being able to make good on its promises for years that it would not stand idly by while Israel achieved success and became accepted in the region. Saturday night’s failures proved that Iran, while still dangerous, is not the tiger it thought it was. Israel might do better to do nothing now and wait to respond with one of these options when the Iranians become complacent, and stop worrying about our response. It would take patience on our part which is always in short supply here, but would employ effective psychological warfare on an enemy nation waiting for the other shoe to fall. And when it does we will have the last word.
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By Matt Vespa
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